


Six times the Warden Blackwall loved the Herald of Andraste, and one time a fugitive called Thom loved a Carta thug

by HardingHightown



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Minor Character Death, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:10:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3462206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly as it says. Seven short moments from their first meeting until the Inquisitor is given that title.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The flowers for the old widower

A small detour, that was what she’d called it. And here he is, barely sworn into the inquisition five minutes, clambering up a mountainside in the Hinterlands. He could have sworn they’d been here just moments before, but he bites his tongue. He doesn’t yet know their great leader well enough to call her on her mistakes, and the scowl on her hard face makes him think that any comment would not be appreciated. Eventually, they seem to reach the location. High on a hill, she finds a clutch of flowers in her pack and lays them on a simple stone altar. She sits in silence for a moment as they watch her. A glance at the other dwarf doesn’’t clear anything up- he seems as confused as he is.

She doesn’t say anything as she picks up her pack and walks back down the hill- a simple nod to the tall Seeker and they are all expected to follow. Blackwall thinks he might ask the woman, Cassandra he’d recalled the Herald naming her, but she keeps up her brisk pace, leaving him to settle behind them.

There is a strange silence then, and Blackwall starts to ask himself whether it was wise to follow the so called Herald. She’d hardly made a strong impression when they met, leaving the talking to the Seeker. Cassandra had seemed a more logical leader. Bold, striking, with a voice that cut through the air and straight to the heart. A sword and a shield and the Divine’s own blessing, at that. But Seeker Cassandra now walks two paces behind the dwarf, and he reckons that is as good a reason as any to keep following.

She takes them all the way back to Redcliffe, telling them she’ll be just a moment, then they could start the journey back to Haven. Varric and Cassandra find their own amusements in the town, but Blackwall decides to follow the Herald, watching her as she goes to speak with an elderly elf.

The scowl that had been painted on her face through the past day melts away as she bows her head to the elder man, and Blackwall watches, unable to catch the words as she says something to him and he grasps her hand in thanks. A soft, sad smile plays on her lips, breaking the hardness of her face and turning her as sweet as a child as she walks away from old man, settling on the edge of the water of the docks and throwing something into the water, something that glitters as it falls.

As he walks towards her to make his presence known, she turns to look up at him, eyes straining slightly against the sun.

“Will you sit with me, Warden Blackwall?”

He obliges, though it is harder in his plate that it was for her in her leathers. He lets his hand skim the water for a moment, watching as the ripples play out over the surface into nothing.

When he finally asks what she had done for the man, she replies simply, “His wife lies across a battlefield, has done for many years. He’s old. There’s few of his people here. Who would give him that little bit of peace? Nobody in Redcliffe.”

She stretches out her legs, letting the heels of her boots splash slightly against the water as she looks out over to the setting sun. “An Elf of that age would have seen many things. He’ll see worse before he dies. What’s taking some flowers to someone like me? Nothing. But for someone like him…?”

She turns her face back to him, a wary look in her eye. “I suppose you think that’s a waste of time, when looking at what we’re facing.”

No, he wants to say. I do not think that. I think that’s wonderful, and kind, and thoughtful beyond the expectation of your leadership. I think it’s noble, I think it’s generous, and I think I want you to smile at me in the way you smiled at him.

He settles for a shake of the head, and they sit in silence until the sun sets over the hills.


	2. A close shave

The problem he has found in keeping up with the Herald is not that he wants to stop, but that he never wants to let her out of his sight. When she is there, it seems like he’s right to keep up the lie, that a greater good keeps him in the fray. When she is gone, that same sickness washes over him as before, and he gets lost in himself, thinking about his reasons for taking the name Blackwall. He was a fraud then, and he is a fraud now. It was for him, and him alone.

She is fierce in battle, more vibrancy that technique, he notices. She hurls herself at her victims, hacking into them with her daggers with little finesse, but it works well enough. He can’t have imagined a woman like her would have had any formal training after all- it was more than likely her first victim had been in self defense. What she does excel at is traps. He watches her in camp sometimes, crafting in meticulous detail the smallest, most intricate mechanisms, her brow furrowed with concentration as she works late into the night, her dwarven eyes glowing against the glow of the campfire. She doesn’t throw them into the battlefield as she throws herself. Instead, she hides herself in shadow and lays them as gently as she laid the flowers on the old elvhen grave. The traps would always go unnoticed, always surprise the enemy, as she surprised him.

This fight is harder than the others they have faced. The rain was beating down, and they had been ambushed. Templars, he guesses from the armour, but lacking any reason, any humanity it seems. It feels like they are men possessed. The stocky man he finds himself toe to toe with holds his shield to block his body, leading to little attack but an almost indomitable defense. There is little mistaking this tactic. It is brutal, it is designed to wear him down, and Blackwall finds himself failing.

He almost misses the thrust of the Templar’s shield entirely, but the fatigue is in his bones. It makes him slow. The shield catches him, throwing him off balance. He sees the blade coming towards him, and braces himself for the worst as the blade is lifted above his head… but then she is there, her daggers spinning against a weakness in the Templar’s armour. She finds the gap across the abdomen and thrusts, one dagger pushing deep into the flesh. The other joins it, and then she pulls them apart, ripping the man to pieces and coating her in his blood.

She turns to look at him just for a second, but in that second his heart thumps in his head and his mouth tastes like iron and he is utterly consumed by the sight of her face covered in red, the rain washing it down her dark face, her tangled, long hair stuck to her skin, the faint pant of her breath in and out, blood flowing over her pink lips, and her eyes, her golden eyes fixed on his. He is bared before her in that moment. The lie dissolves against the truth that he owes her his life.

Later, long after the fight, he thanks her for it. She shrugs her shoulders and tells him she’d have done it for any of her men. He supposes that must be true.


	3. The dying scout

There are casualties in their fight in the Hinterlands. There are always casualties in war.

The scouts took the most damage. Three of them died on the field, a further two were severely injured, and now the Inquisitor stands at their sides at the Crossroads, her face still marked with the blood of their enemies. She had been there hours. One of the men lay resting soundly, but the other, a young man not yet out of his twenties, is thrashing against the makeshift bed. His skin is pale and shining with sweat, and Blackwall is sure the lad won’t make it back to Haven.

Walking closer to them, he notices the Herald’s face isn’t painted with a sympathetic smile. She is unreadable as always, but he marks that one of her un-gloved hands is gripping onto the boy’s wrist, her thumb pressed into the inside of his flesh, pulling his attention as his teeth clench.

“You were telling me,” he hears her saying as he sits by them both. He wants to help, but he doesn’t quite know how to so he sits quiet and listens to her continue, her voice low and level. “Listen. Listen to me. Look at me. You were telling me when we last spoke. You were telling me of home. Do you remember?”

The man’s eyes are swimming, unable to focus. Blackwall spots her pushing her thumb into him slightly, repeating what she said, and with a forced breath he croaks out. “Ho-”

“Honnleath! That’s right. Of course. And there was someone there. Tell me. Go on. Tell me while we wait for the healer. I need a good story.”

Blackwall holds out his waterskin, hoping he can offer something to help the wretch, but she shakes her head slightly, so slightly he might not have noticed. The lad takes a few deep breaths, the slightest smile playing on his pale lips, “Mara…”

“Mara. Of course. How could I forget such a beautiful name? I bet she’s a beauty. Isn’t she?”

The man nods so slightly, as tears fill the corners of his eyes and blood starts to touch his lips.

Siba grips his wrist tighter, letting her other hand take the boy’s shaking hand. She holds it tight. “I bet she thinks of you. I bet she smiles and is beautiful and thinks of you.”

The boy doesn’t hear her.

Sometime later, when the night has started to settle, he seeks her out again, finding her sharpening her daggers on a whetstone a little way from the main camp. This time when he offers her a skein it is whiskey, and this time she takes him up on it, drinking a long swig as he settles himself at her side.

“It was a good thing you did,” he starts, his voice hoarser than he’d thought it would be. “Giving that lad hope like that.”

“I didn’t give him shit,” she replies, handing him back his offering and returning to her blades. “I didn’t tell him he’d get better. I didn’t even bother to learn his name. I just got him to remember, that’s all. Plenty of people twice his age don’t have anything good to think of. They die full of shit and fear and that’s that. So he was lucky, in that at least.”

Blackwall doesn’t rightly know if she’s talking about him, or about herself. He’s not noticed it before, but she’s not as young as he first thought. There’s lines in her brow, heavy bags under her eyes.

He takes a sip of the whiskey himself, and then finds himself saying, “You can’t carry them all, you know.”

“Fuck you.”

That’s her response, spat out like fire over the gap between them as she strikes her dagger over the stone. “I’ll carry all of them. Every fucking one, scullery maid to commander. They deserve that, at least.”

Her rhythm falters slightly, her breath too, and she pauses for a second that feels like an eternity to him. He’s frozen in that moment, not sure what to say, not sure if anything can make this moment easier for her, make them closer. Then her shoulders sag. She breathes in deeply, and before she resumes she looks at him, dead on, and says quietly. “It was easier, though. Back when it was tens of men. Not hundreds.”

If she were any other woman, he’d expect those words to lead to tears, or a moment of weakness, a moment where he could take her in his arms, kiss her brow and tell her it would all be okay, but that is not her. She resumes her pace with the whetstone, the sound of the metal matching the rhythm of his heart as he reaches over to her and gently squeezes her shoulder in support.

She does not shrug him away, and he is certain that if he dies tomorrow this will be the moment he will take to the Maker’s side.


	4. Haven

Here she becomes something new.

Haven is crowded, making the cold seem to almost disappear back into the hills. He’s pleased to see such an abundance of people, so many rallying to serve the cause. Yet in all the bustle he never loses sight of her. Though she is small, even for a dwarf, the whole town seems to be built around wherever she walks.

Today, she walks to the forge beside him and works. It is not the first time.

It is a quiet thing, he knows that now following a few stunted attempts at conversation. She is there to work, not idly chatter. She'll sit by the light of the forge and, using her own set of moulds kept pristine by Harritt, she'll craft for hours. Pieces of traps, pins for lock picking, sometimes arrowheads, though he's never seen her use a bow. She works in fine detail, her only noise the occasional hiss of frustration followed by a deep breath to keep herself balanced, calm, a still centre to the bustle of the busy forge. He could watch her for hours. And he does.

When the light wanes she slips away silently, at least she does most days. Today however she shoots a smile at him, and can feel his cheeks flush as she invites him to drink with her at the tavern. He is powerless to say no.

He’s not stepped foot inside since they arrived. He’s afraid, he supposes, that somebody might recognise him, maybe another mercenary come from Orlais, perhaps just a person on the streets, perhaps a Marcher. He supposes he can’t hide forever though, as much as he tried. Something has drawn him to the Inquisition, be it Andraste’s guidance or simply a foolish need to be closer to somebody, anybody, after the years of solitude. The lie has weighed heavily on him. He deserves to let it sit to the side, if only for one night. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

In the candlelight of the small crowded room her skin glows golden, her eyes sparkle and the scars and age-marks seem to lift away from her skin. Or maybe that’s the elf’s influence. Sera makes her laugh in a way he’s never seen before, with her long ungainly limbs flapping with every story, with the tinkle of her laugh and the piercing rhythm of her almost nonsensical words, of her stories and her love for life, the life she chooses amongst the people she cares about. He’s sucked in too, and before he knows it there are tears pricking his eyes over a story about a stolen golden “ornament” that steals all the air from him with laugher. He meets the Inquisitor’s eyes in that moment, and sees hers are shining too, her face cracked wide open with a mirth he has never seen before. This is what she deserves, this joy, this feeling of freedom and love for the world, the laughter and the merriment and the feeling of being a person again. Her hand is on Sera’s shoulder to steady herself, and he finds himself wondering how much joy she finds with her…

Before he can consider it more, there is a noise from the other side of the tavern, a scrape of a wooden chair on the floor. A girl cries out, and he thinks he sees a flash of metal, but he can’t be sure. Cadash is already half way through the crowd before he’s stood, crouched and weaving through legs to the source of the sound. He sees the green light of her hand flicker against the walls and hears a man call out in fear before he reaches the scene. She has her boot in his stomach and one hand on his lapel, the slight elven girl crawling away weeping painting the scene as much as he needs it to be shown. Siba's other hand glows, cracks, and the boy (for it is a boy, Blackwall realises, no older than eighteen to be sure) whimpers and tries in vain to back away.

"Forgive me, Herald, I was only teasing!" he whines, but the weeping of the girl will sway her more, he knows that much. Siba slams the boy's head to the ground, telling him to be gone from Haven by dawn or face her in the light when she is sober, and Blackwall can see by the boy's wide-eyes and damp trousers that he does not doubt her sincerity.

The bard starts playing, the conversation peaks up again, but Lady Cadash does not rejoin them. Instead, she remains with the little elf, stroking the girl's hand and wiping the tears from her eyes.

"She'll not be back tonight, beardy," Sera tells him with a wry smile. "She's got the moves out. You'll see."

The elf girl smiles at her, he sees it now, cocking her head to one side. Within minutes they disappear throught the crowd and out of the door, hands at each other, and he tries to drown the feeling in his gut with beer.

 

  
The next morning, slightly later than normal, she comes and sits with him, yawning into her un-gloved hands as she pulls herself up into her nook.

“Long night?” He asks with a smile.

“The longest. Girl couldn’t relax. Think she thought I’d light her cunt on fire with the mark. Perhaps I did.”

He can’t help the gaffaw that escapes him at the thought of it, even as the pain hits his chest, the ache of jealousy. She smiles in returns, wincing and rubbing her eye against the glare of the morning sun.

“I won’t keep you then, my lady,” he mutters after a momentary silence slips between them, a silence he thinks may betray too much. “I’m sure you have much you wish to do.”

“Stay,” she replies, touching his arm so softly for the smallest moment before reaching for her tools. He can feel the touch shake through his body like ripples on a pond.

“After all,” she continues, oblivious to how his mouth has dried, how her eyes meeting his makes his heart sick. “I come here to spent time with you.”


	5. To Skyhold

In a blink of an eye it all disappears. Haven, the elf girl, the tavern, the forge. Even her, for a time.

It weighs in his chest when she leaves the Chantry, not looking back as she goes for the door. He’d hoped she’d take him with her, but she doesn’t, leaving him to rally survivors and leave. He does, of course. He gives all of himself to it, helping the weaker, grabbing all the supplies he can carry, anything to try and stop the voice in his head screaming to go back. Later she’ll tell him that it is because she trusted him, but it is a week before she can.

The days between leaving her in Haven and finding her freezing body is something that sticks to him, clings to his skin. He’s sure she’s not dead until he’s not, and the fear settles into his gut and he thinks of all the things he should have told her, from the simple truth of his real name to the more complex reason for hiding it, from the fact that he hasn’t slept in all that time to the reason why, the very real feeling that he may be more attached to her than he possibly can admit.

He tends to survivors, helps the weaker ones and the injured. He cooks from what meager supplies they managed to grab from stores on the way and passes it out, ignoring the pain of hunger in his own belly. He helps as best he can in treating the wounds of those they carry with them, and he uses her trick, her holding of the wrist and talking about home. Many die, all the same.

Sera is a comfort. He is surprised at that. In all the madness, she finds time to laugh, to fill the silences, to make him forget for a few seconds that she is not there. He finds himself, for the first time in years, considering what it could mean to have a friend. It is frightening. It is unsafe. And yet it feels right, uncomplicated, to sit and laugh and feel like a real person again.

Then they find her.

She collapses on the top of a hill, a mere speck on the horizon, but she’s there, she’s seen, and they all rush to get her. It’s Cullen who takes her in his arms, damn him, but they’re all there, all crowding and sighing with relief, and he hopes she knows how much they all rely on her, how fragmented they’ve been until this moment, where the presence of her has drawn them to a group. She is set down, covered in furs. He puts her fingers in his mouth to warm them. They are like ice. Her breath creates the slightest hint of mist in front of her.

She  _lives_.

* * *

 

It takes a while for her to come around, but he is there when she does, he says nothing, but without a thought takes her hand in his, squeezing softly as he smiles. She lifts his gloved hand to her mouth. He could almost swear there are tears in her eyes.

* * *

 

“We lost too many.”

They are trekking north, at Solas’ suggestion, and they do not stop for long. There has been no fresh snow at least. In fact today the sky is clear and bright, the sun warm on their faces. He walks with Cadash, keeping his long stride tight to her pace.

“We should have been better prepared.”

She repeats the words over and over, as if they will bring back the dead. He notices her hair is stuck to the side of her face. Her eyes seem to look beyond the horizon. Her breath comes heavily from her, punctuating each move of her feet.

“My lady, are you quite well?”

“Don’t call me that.”

She stops for the briefest moment, coughing out all the air in her lungs before she starts off again at a brutal pace.

“Cadash-”

“Dwarves don’t get sick.”

“They do sometimes. You need to-”

“I need to be seen.”

She does not stop, she keeps pushing forward, but he notices her boots are heavier in the snow as she trudged ever forward. “Blackwall, they look to me. They look to Leliana, Cullen, Cassandra. We cannot fail them. They’ve lost enough following us. So if I fall in this sodding snow, you belt me to your shield and push me forward, you hear?”

He says nothing.

They do not stop again until they find it. The promised place. Skyhold.

She does not rest until every last man and woman is safe within the battlements.

He carries her in, hidden from sight. She rests her lips against his neck.

She sleeps.

He watches.


	6. Your Inquisitor

He checks on her a couple of times, watching her as she sleeps. There is a peace in her now they have reached Skyhold. This, he realises, may be the first time he’s ever seen her truly rest. Her breath is heavy in her body, the sweat on her brow making her shine in the candlelight. The healers say she has a fever, and it pricks at his heart. that word, even though they say Dwarves rarely die from sickness of the body. She is so small, so very small, she could almost be a human child in the low light and the image of Liddy lying dead in their bed will not leave him. 

He had been a child and all seemed simple. He would love his sister and pray to the maker and she would live. She would grow. He did not waste his childhood in worry. He lived, laughed with her, left the house one day a boy with faith and came back to an emptiness that never left his house. He sat with her for hours, waiting for his father to return from market, his mother from the mill. He sat in silence, no prayers for the future, and no sense of the past.

But those memories do not lie still any more.

The sight of dead children twist in his mind. The sounds of their death, not quiet, not slipping away like Liddy but pleading, weeping, begging under the grunts and hacks of the blades of his men. Cries of grief seep into remembered cries of fear, tangling up in his gut, forcing him to his feet unable to rest easy as he kneels by the Herald’s bed, one hand clasped around hers. Sat like this, holding on to her like this, seeing the lines in her flesh and feeling the callouses from years of fighting, of living, the memories of the children fade slightly. There is just her, in this moment. Whether she lives, or dies.

Mother Gisele keeps her vigil and asks that he pray for the Herald. He says he will not in her presence, he doesn’t know how a dwarf might feel about such things but when he takes himself away he finds the prayer helps. They start the same each time. The start is easy. _Maker, please deliver her from this fever and back to us. Maker, please grant us this._  Then the words get tangled in his head.

 

_Maker, please let her live. I need to see her smile at me again._

_Maker, let all of this not have been in vain._

_Maker…_

_Maker, let me be the man she thinks I am. The man she needs me to be._

 

She wakes on the second day, all danger passed.

She drinks weak ale and asks for bread and nug to eat. She tries to stand almost immediately and is shouted down by the Seeker, who will not hear of it. We need you strong, she says. We need you ready. Blackwall helps her with her tankard, lifting it to her lips and wiping away any liquid that seeps past her lips, and receives no thanks.

“If my family could see me like this… they always warned me humans would make me weak.”

He chuckles, and she smiles back.

He thanks the Maker over and over.

\---

She is standing on the stairs of Skyhold, one hand clasped around a ceremonial sword. She is looking back at Cassandra, and he can’t see her face, he is too far back and in the wrong part of the hundred-strong crowd that have gathered, but he knows how it will read. Confusion, fear, mistrust. She is the last to see that she is, and always has been, their leader.

“I never thought I’d look up to a Duster.”

A dwarf near him is talking to an elf, both of them from the cities of the north, he assumes from their dress. Their eyes stay fixed on the scene in front of them even as they talk, annoyance flashing across their faces.

“She’s a surfacer, like you.”

“Just like you’re a Dalish, huh?”

There is a swell in the crowd as she turns to them all, eyes lingering on the sword almost as big as she, the sunlight catching what he thinks to himself might well be a tear in the corner of her eye. She tilts her head, taking in all of them. She’ll carry them all, she had said to him, and all had turned from tens to hundreds to thousands.

She starts to speak, saying how she will stand for all, and the elf cheers loudly. The dwarf shoots a look at her, and she tells him that Cadash is good to the alienage in Ostwick. He thinks of the elven girl in Haven, and can’t help his mind creeping to the thought of Cadash surrounded by beautiful Elvhen girls in her prime.

Maker’s balls, he manages to ruin a solemn moment with such filth. He closes his eyes and pushes it away, pushes him away, the man who would have delighted in such thoughts, who would ran rather than stayed at her bed.

He looks back up at her, willing her to catch his eye, but he knows she won’t, and it is right for her not to. He is one soldier in the thousands and she is, as they have just called her, their Inquisitor.

The crowd roars, and he does too, the cheer coming from deep in his gut as the sword she holds aloft catches the rays of light from above. She looks right, divinely chosen. He thanks the Maker one last time for returning her, for bringing her back to her path, and he promises right there and then he’ll do nothing more than be her devoted servant.

She is the head of the Inquisition, the instrument of the Maker.

He is nothing but a ghost. 

 


	7. Lady

The celebration lasts long into the night, with every corner of the castle seemingly taken up by song and cheer. There is wine free-flowing, coin being gambled, and Blackwall finds himself surrounded by smiling faces, by familiar touches. He finds himself in a place he could belong for the first time in years.

Sera sits with him all night, teasing at him, finding the threads and pulling until she has him laughing, drinking freely, sharing old stories he knows he should keep to himself. When she starts telling the story of a high-bred girl and her own determined hand he can feel the tears rolling down his cheeks with laugher. It doesn’t help that Seeker Cassandra sits by them, stony faced, the slightest hint of a blush marring her cheeks. It is not long before they’re both laughing so hard they can’t continue the story. He feels, for the first time in an age, completely at ease.

The Iron Bull is the first to notice that the Herald, their Inquisitor, is not actually there to celebrate.

He tries to ignore it. She’s probably tired, exhausted from the day and its meaning. She’s likely wanting to be alone, but the moment it’s pointed out to him it gnaws at him. The absence of her. It’s a feeling he’s not had in a long while, a feeling that sits heavy in his belly.

He stumbles out of the tavern, far too drunk, and decides to walk through the rooms on the battlements. 

He finds himself thinking of women, like he always does when he’s pissed. He was always a lover of women, back when he was Thom and things were simple enough as to be expressed in single words. Drink. Earn. Fuck. Fight. Fucking was the most important for a good long while, the drive for all the others. He liked a good few of them, especially in the moments just before and after. He loved one, for sure. The fourth daughter of an Orlesian noble, a bright, witty, beautiful young thing with tits that fit in his hand and skin that was fine and silky. He loved her coy smiles and her long black hair, all curls with a smell of Crystal Grace. He loved the gaps between her teeth and how she’d bite on his shoulder when he fucked her. He loved how she cried whenever he’d leave her bed, leave her to her husband. He loved how it made him feel, to leave her weeping for the loss of him.

He wonders if he’s feeling that now, if this, these feelings stirring for the Herald, if they can compare to the one time Thom Rainier loved. He certainly doesn’t think so. That was hazy, rich, indulgent and full of warmth. This is… this is something else entirely.

He doesn’t even see her at first as he enters a broken down room, one in the very corners where the stones are half missing, but hidden amongst broken boxes and cobwebs and the coldness of the night there is a heaviness in the air, a heavy smoke he knows is familiar and yet seems to have come from another life. Then the smell settles in his head, brings forward a hundred memories as he realises what he’s seeing. She’s there, The Herald of Andraste, Inquisitor Cadash, shirt unbuttoned to her navel, boots to the side, propped up against boxes and fabric with a lotus-pipe wedged between her teeth.

 “Ser Blackwall!” she croaks, her voice heavy and deep. “Would you care to partake?”

It takes him a moment to realise she means the pipe. If he were Thom Rainier he knew he would, but Warden Blackwall was not that man, is not that man. He shakes his head and she laughs slightly, inhaling another long breath of smoke and exhaling a row of beautifully formed rings with her beautifully formed mouth. He would have kissed the smoke from her and exhaled it over her ribs, back then.

 "I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Lady Cadash."

 He goes to leave. She shakes her head, propping herself up on her elbows. "Stay. But just. Don't call me that. Not you.”

 He stays frozen to the spot, watching as she shifts again, the curve of her breast shifting with no fabric to bind it. She inclines her head. “Will you stay? Just for a while.”

 He should not, and he knows it. He should bow, and leave, and hold on to the mask that keeps him safe. The distance he needs. Thom Rainier loved a pretty young noble girl but Warden Blackwall loves nothing but his duty. That’s what’s right.

 Whatever his mind says is right melts away as his body pulls forward a barrel. He sits on it, just far away enough to be proper.

  _Just_.

 “I'm not a lady Cadash in the way they mean,” she continues, taking a long drag from her pipe. “Not like that. Feels strange when you say it.”

 “I’m sorry if I caused offense.”

 She laughs so hard she chokes a little.

 “It’s not offense. It’s just not right. I'm not Cadash for one, I am _of_ Cadash. You understand? If I'd grown up in Orzammar, I'd have joined the legion of the dead, most likely. Then I'd have been of the legion. Same is true topside. I run with Cadash. I am of Cadash. Other Carta will call me Cadash. But I'm not anybody. I’m nobody. I'm certainly not a lady of a noble house.”

 “You don’t see yourself as a lady, fine, but you are Inquisitor now. Surely that counts for something?”

 She looks at him, amusement crossing her face. She shakes away that title with a flick of her hair, and stretches her neck to look up at the stars, eyes swimming. He looks at her then, as if for the first time, taking in every scar, every mark, all the age and lines and hardship on her face. Perhaps it is strange to her, to consider herself to be such a person. Perhaps it is foolish of him to make her take it, even when masks such as titles can be so useful.

 “You are Cadash as I am Warden,” he offers, feeling warm to his bones as she smiles broadly back at him.

 “Good! Good. You understand. I thought you would.”

 She takes another long, heavy drag from her pipe, the spark lighting up the darkness that creeps in around them. The moonlight hits her exhalation. His eyes fix on her movement of her ribs, as he tries not to imagine her breathing hard and fast beneath him.

 “What about you, Warden?” she asks. “You can’t just be “Blackwall”. There must be a first name, at least. You’ve never told me.”

 “Another life, my L- _Cadash_.”

 “Another life?”

 “You know everything worth knowing about me.”

  
“I don’t think I do.”

A silence passes over them, makes him shiver, as her eyes take in all of him as if appraising a painting. For a moment he thinks she must know, she must, she’s looking straight through him… but then she speaks, her thumb running over the bulb of her pipe.

“I started taking lotus after pay came in twenty years ago. Whenever people die under my command, I smoke it. People ask me why. They ask if it’s scary, if you see the dead. You do,” she locked on to his eyes, her stare boring through him. “You see them all. But you need to. You always need to see them. You shouldn’t ever look away. Do you understand?”

He thinks of Liddy and the Calliers, of Simone’s husband and of Blackwall, the real Blackwall, and he swallows and nods to her. He understands, but he can’t look. He can’t.

She is brave, where he is a coward. She looks at all she has done and Maker, for the first time he sees her and everything she must have done. He knows what it is to be a mercenary. He knows what it’s like to kill for coin. He knows that where he was taking the money... she must have been making the call.

It’s impossible, the room is open to the stars, but he feels like the Lotus is getting to him. His mouth is dry and his mind is racing as he sees her stand and walk to him, her shirt falling further open until he can see one breast, the strong muscles in her stomach flexing as she, uneasy on her feet, comes to standing between his wide-stretched thighs.She is so close he can taste the Lotus on her breath.

“You get so lost in thought, Warden,” she murmured, her breath hot, and he notices her fingertips brush just over his knees. “You look at me and you think and for so long I wondered why. I wondered if you were hired by my sisters to kill me. I wondered if you thought me base, underserving of Andraste’s favour. I spent so much time watching you watching me, you know that?”

He blinks, a long, slow blink, trying to stop his head from thumping and his breath from coming hard from his nose, but when he opens his eyes, she is even closer to him.

“But you just want to fuck me. That’s it, isn’t it?”

He wants to answer. He wants the answer to be yes. He’s sure that if he can say yes and mean it, if he can let go just once, fuck her as Thom Rainier, kiss her little feet then up her legs and further, press his tongue in to her until she clenches her thighs around his head then finish on her stomach, if he can just do that, then it would be over, and done, and they’d never speak on it again.

Her hands begin to trace up his thighs and he thinks to himself, just let her, just have this, just be happy for once in your sodding life then leave, just leave, but his hands catch hers and bring them to his lips.

“I’m sorry, my Lady.”

She scowls at the name and growls as he leaves and doesn’t look back.

He is a coward, and he is in love. He is in love with a woman different from and better than any woman he’d known before. He is in love with a woman who scares him, who sees parts of him he keeps hidden. He is in love with a woman who could really, properly, love him back.

And tomorrow he will end it, because he has to. The man who was free to love died on the coast. The man who remains is little more than embers. He will push her away, keep pushing, be the man Warden Blackwall should be. A noble man. A brave man.

He will end it.


End file.
